Drone 100, Coordinated Drone Performance Team

Drone 100 is Intel’s drone performance team which made its public debut as part of Vivid Sydney. One hundred coordinated, illuminated drones performed a spectacular choreographed routine over Sydney Harbor, accompanied by the breathtaking sounds of the Sydney Youth Orchestra.

(Drone 100 at Sidney)

Drone 100 will push the limits of what it has previously achieved, performing for the first time ever above water, in front of a live, public audience in the heart of a major city with the Sydney Opera House sails as a backdrop for this unique performance.

Weather permitting, Drone 100 will light up the skies above Sydney Harbour in a 7-minute performance each night starting at 8 p.m. Flying in dynamic formation, the drones will showcase different shapes and colours to reveal a never-seen-before bespoke animation designed specifically for the Sydney performance. Controlled by one main pilot, the performance will be synchronised to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, performed live by the Sydney Youth Orchestra, to create a magnificent display of art and technology.

“With drones quickly emerging as an important computing platform of the future, Drone 100 exemplifies what it means to reinvent experiences with new technology,” said Anil Nanduri, Intel’s general manager of unmanned aviation systems for its Perceptual Computing Group. “Drone 100 will capture the imagination of all who see it. Through this experience, we hope to inspire the imagination of Vivid Sydney festival goers and highlight the future potential of drone technology.”

In his stylish 1995 novel The Diamond Age, science fiction author Neal Stephenson wrote about a similar swarm of devices tasked with surveillance and security - the dog pod grid:

Atlantis/Shanghai occupied the loftiest ninety percent of New Chusan's land area - an inner plateau about a mile above sea level, where the air was cooler and cleaner. Parts of it were marked off with a lovely wrought-iron fence, but the real border was defended by something called the dog pod grid - a swarm of quasi-independent aerostats...
(Read more about Stephenson's dog pod grid)